Maker Initiatives Director Stephanie Santoso speaks during the Make For All Commitments Announcement Event on the fourth floor of the Chattanooga Public Library on Friday, June 14, 2019 in Chattanooga, Tenn.Makers and community representatives from across the nation convened in Chattanooga Friday for the first day of NOMCON, the Nation of Makers Conference, to discuss the growing makers movement.
The Washington, D.C.-based Nation of Makers focuses on promoting impactful creators by “encouraging connections, sharing resources, facilitating funding opportunities and advocating for the maker movement.” In the second year of its conference, Nation of Makers has partnered with Mayor Andy Berke, who prides Chattanooga on being a “City of Creators.”
“By that, and this is my personal view, we are all endowed with God’s gift of creativity and when we exercise that power, we get to our highest points,” Berke said during the Maker Mayor’s Collaboratory meeting Friday morning. “The makers [movement] is about each and every one of us being able to find that creativity and exercise that power.”
The first day of the three-day conference included a panel of remarkable young local creators moderated by Mythbusters’ Adam Savage and hosted in the Chattanooga Public Library’s Makerspace.
“This space opened in 2013 and the whole idea was that we wanted the Chattanooga Public Library to be a place where you could create content instead of just consuming it,” Library Director Corrine Hill said ahead of the panel.